Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a daytime running lighting apparatus for a vehicle. More particularly, the present invention relates to a daytime running lighting apparatus for a vehicle, which changes a light amount of a daytime running light in accordance with peripheral illumination intensity or brightness.
Description of Related Art
In general, it is effective, in terms of safety, that a driver turns on external lamps of a vehicle, for example, headlamps or tail lamps so as to recognize the existence of the vehicle to other drivers in front of or behind the vehicle in a case in which the surrounding environment is dark like in the nighttime or visibility is poor because of snowy or rainy weather even during the daytime.
Actually, in the countries at high latitude such as Northern Europe or Canada where heavy fog often occurs during the daytime, a driver is obligated to turn on a daytime running light (DRL) having a regulated light amount or larger when the driver drives the automobile during the daytime.
Therefore, to meet this obligation in Northern Europe or Canada, the daytime running light, which is turned on only when the automobile travels during the daytime, is separately installed in the automobile, or the existing external lamps of the automobile, for example, headlamps or tail lamps are utilized as the daytime running light.
However, the daytime running light may cause light blindness to a driver in the oncoming vehicle and a pedestrian at a location where the surrounding environment is dark, but if the designed light amount of the daytime running light is adjusted to be small in order to solve the problem of light blindness, performance of recognizing the daytime running light may deteriorate at a bright location, which may compromise the purpose of safe driving to be achieved by recognizing the daytime running light.
The information disclosed in this Background of the Invention section is only for enhancement of understanding of the general background of the invention and should not be taken as an acknowledgement or any form of suggestion that this information forms the prior art already known to a person skilled in the art.